30 November 2016: Today, the United Nations rejected the United Kingdom’s attempt to appeal the UN’s February ruling in favour of Julian Assange.

The decision of 5 February 2016 therefore stands, and the UK and Sweden are once again required to immediately put an end to Mr Assange’s arbitrary detention and afford him monetary compensation.

Earlier this year, the United Nations concluded the 16 month long case to which the UK was a party. The UK lost, appealed, and today - lost again. The UN instructed the UK and Sweden to take immediate steps to ensure Mr Assange's liberty, protection, and enjoyment of fundamental human rights. No steps have been taken, jeopardising Mr Assange's life, health and physical integrity, and undermining the UN system of human rights protection.

Despite initially being given two weeks to appeal the 5 February ruling, the United Kingdom waited until after the first appeal period expired, and instead submitted an appeal for review on 24 March, which the United Nations now found inadmissable.

As a member of the United Nations Security Council and the United Nations Human Rights Council, the United Kingdom must now respect its commitments.

From the UN press release:

The UN expert group also considered four requests for review of previous opinions, submitted by the Arab Republic of Egypt, the State of Kuwait and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Working Group concluded that the requests did not meet the threshold of a review as enshrined in paragraph 21 of its methods of work, and that they were thus not admissible.

Today, 3 July 2016, on the birthday of the greatest truth-teller of our times, it might be appropriate to congratulate and celebrate with Julian Assange (and his friends and his cat).

But is is also appropriate to review the persecution he has endured now for so many years. And no one is more suited to that task than the United Nations, as per their ruling from 4 December 2015.

Their description of the conditions of Julian Assange's persecution unequivocally places the Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny in a category solely her own, forever displacing Claes Borgström as the country's (perhaps the world's) most incompetent (and most heinous) jurist ever.

Today Julian Assange celebrates yet another birthday - his 45th - at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. He remains there because the United Kingdom refuse to recognise the 5 February ruling of the United Nations.

The United Kingdom, running lockstep with the United States, prefer to refer to a Swedish court ruling to detain Julian in absentia for the purposes of a questioning the Swedes have refused to undertake over thirty times.

Julian was granted political asylum by Ecuador after it became clear that neither Sweden nor the United Kingdom would do anything to resolve the deadlock, and because it's been the intention of the United Kingdom to send Julian to Sweden, a country which has a special agreement of temporary surrender with the United States, an agreement that supersedes all other agreements and laws.

Guillaume Long of the Foreign Ministry of Ecuador has acknowledged that his country has now received an application for questioning from notorious Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny, but the contents of that request are not yet known.

There will be a birthday celebration outside the embassy at 16:00 BST, with birthday cake and refreshments available.

This Sunday, 19 June 2016, will mark four years that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. For the next seven days, a number of events will take place around the world to bring attention to this situation.

Presenting two new grassroots campaigns in support of Julian Assange, both dedicated to resolving the unwillingness of Britain and Sweden to follow the 5 February 2016 ruling of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.

#BoycottSweden

#BoycottSweden is a grassroots effort to pressure the Swedish government to break the new stalemate in the Assange case and to obey the ruling of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, using both a blog and an accompanying Twitter account.

Courage, the international organisation dedicated to the protection of truthtellers, today announces the launch of the Known Unknowns Fund to support suspected sources under investigation. The Fund is the first specifically designed to assist individuals who are alleged to have disclosed information of significant public value but do not yet face formal charges. The name of the fund, a play on former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's notorious defence of inadequate sourcing, acknowledges that many who find themselves in this situation will not be in a position to confirm their identity to the public.

On June 19, 2012, the Australian citizen Julian Assange, showed up on the headquarters of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, with the purpose of requesting diplomatic protection of the Ecuadorian State, invoking the norms on political asylum in force. The requester has based his petition on the fear of an eventual political persecution of which he may be a victim in a third State, which can use his extradition to the Swedish Kingdom to obtain in turn the ulterior extradition to such country.

The Government of Ecuador, faithful to the asylum procedure, and attributing the greatest seriousness to this case, has examined and assessed all the aspects implied, particularly the arguments presented by Mr Assange backing up the fear he feels before a situation that this person considers as a threat to his life, personal safety and freedom.

Sunday 15 August 2010

What happens today is another of the official reasons Julian came back to Sweden. Today he's to meet Rick Falkvinge and sign an agreement for WikiLeaks hosting with Pirate Party rack space in the Bahnhof bunker.

Anna comes along as the official WikiLeaks press secretary.

Pirate Party system administrator Richie Olsson also tags along to photograph the event. One of his photographs was long suppressed; it's found below. It shows Anna beaming on the far left.

'Those two weeks were so far the worst in my life. Because I was heartbroken, I was afraid, I was worried, I did not know what lay ahead.'
- Andreas Nygren, today with an NGO helping minors in detention
'I'd very much prefer to be locked up with rats and bad food.'
- Göran, in pretrial detention for 850 days with no access to the outside world

Transcript: Göran sat in pretrial detention for 850 days - criticism of Sweden's record-long detentions is growing
Source: http://sverigesradio.se/sida/avsnitt/392059?programid=4702
Program: In the Name of the Law
Radio channel: Swedish State Radio (sverigesradio.se)
Broadcast date: 6 July 2014
Original language: Swedish
Length: 29:32